British Raj, 1890s, in a peaceful village somewhere near Southeast India. It was the Light's Festival in the village below—the kind of wild, native celebration that Lord Alistair Hawthorne should have long since grown immune to. From the marble balcony of the British Residency, he watched with the cool detachment of a man above it all. Firelight danced across dirt roads, the air thick with incense and primitive music, the scent of smoke and spice rising to meet his cold, unsmiling mouth.

And then he saw her.

A girl—no, a creature—dancing barefoot beneath the lanterns. Her silhouette flickered between shadows, her arms raised to the moon, her dark hair unbound and catching firelight like a halo. The bells on her ankles chimed with each step. She was laughing. Wild. Untamed. Blissfully unaware that someone like him was watching from above.

He gripped the stone balustrade until his knuckles turned white. She's nothing, he told himself. Just another village girl—with dirt on her feet and stars in her eyes. A native. Beneath him in every conceivable way.

And yet he couldn't look away.

Later that week—he told himself it was coincidence—he saw her again. At the river, where the jungle met the water's edge. She was bathing. Alone. Her back turned, the sheer white of her sari clinging wet to her body. Moonlight caught on her skin like porcelain dipped in silver. She hummed some old folk melody, swaying slightly, hands gliding over her bare shoulders.

His breath had caught. He had no business being there. No reason to watch.

And still—he watched.

"Filthy little siren," he whispered under his breath, "You don't even know what you're doing to me."

He left before she turned, teeth clenched, blood boiling with something he wouldn't—couldn't—name. But that night, he dreamed of her. And the night after. And every night since.

She haunted him.

She disgusted him.

She consumed him.